In December 2025, we said we would not cover, promote, or support the Eurovision Song Contest 2026, while Israel remained in it. The contest went ahead in Vienna.
Israel competed, was booed and interrupted during its semi-final, and finished second for the second year running. Five broadcasters — RÚV, RTÉ, RTVE, RTVSLO and AVROTROS — stayed away, and 131 million people watched, down from 166 million in Basel and the smallest television audience the contest has drawn since 2012.
Most of that fall is the simple absence of the boycotting markets, which is rather the point: the EBU spent its seventieth anniversary explaining why the room was emptier. Nothing in the nine months since has given us reason to come back.
We are extending our boycott. We will not cover, promote, or support Eurovision Asia 2026 in Bangkok, or the Eurovision Song Contest 2027 in Burgas. Absent a fundamental change in how the European Broadcasting Union decides who may compete, we expect to say the same about every edition that follows, of every contest carrying the Eurovision name.
Eurovision Asia was the harder call, and we thought about it for a long time. Israel's broadcaster will not be in Bangkok; the EBU has confirmed that no country competing in the Song Contest will appear there. A first contest, broadcasters and artists new to the format, none of them party to any of this; we could have covered the show in November and told ourselves that our position was intact. We decided we couldn't. Our objection was never to one line-up on one night for one year. It is to the organisation that assembles it. Eurovision Asia is an EBU project, licensed under the EBU's brand and sold on the EBU's promise of music defying borders, and a successful debut will be used as proof that the promise still holds. A boycott that stopped at the Contest itself would be a boycott of a broadcast schedule rather than of an institution.
Consider what that institution has done with the past year. In December 2025, the EBU declined to hold a vote on Israel's participation at all, and adopted instead a set of safeguards concerning voting: a larger jury role in the semi-finals and a lower cap on votes per viewer. Five months later, in the middle of contest week, the EBU's own director, Martin Green, issued the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (Kan) a formal warning over videos urging viewers to spend all ten of their votes on Israel, which he said was out of line with the contest's rules and its spirit. The warning was the whole of the consequence. In August 2026, it published its rules for 2027. Those rules raise the minimum age for performers to eighteen, restrict the use of pre-recorded vocals, and, for the first time, allow the EBU to take the right to host away from a winning broadcaster whose country is affected by armed conflict or a sensitive geopolitical situation. Asked to decide who may compete, the EBU has answered a question about who may host. It has now written down the principle that a country at war may be unfit to stage the contest while continuing to insist that the same country is fit to enter it.
The reason this question keeps returning is not fan agitation. It is Gaza. The scale of civilian death, the destruction of hospitals, housing and universities, the displacement of nearly the entire population, the killing of journalists, and the conclusions that United Nations bodies and international human rights organisations have drawn about all of it. An institution that claims peace, dignity and cultural exchange as its founding values cannot hold that a member state's conduct is simply outside its jurisdiction. Neutrality, invoked in these circumstances, is not a principle. It is a decision, and it has been made in one direction every time.
On 24 August, AVROTROS withdrew from the 2027 contest, saying the EBU's new rules did not give it sufficient confidence that the contest's independent and neutral character had been restored. Its director-general, Taco Zimmerman, said the contest cannot be considered neutral while a participating country is engaged in a large-scale military conflict, and that Eurovision has therefore become a platform for division. That is the assessment of a broadcaster that helped build this contest, and won it as recently as 2019. AVROTROS did not name Israel. We will.
Our boycott is not aimed at artists, songwriters, or fans, in Israel or anywhere else. It is aimed at the EBU and at the broadcasters who have decided that participation costs them less than principle. We continue to stand with the delegations that have withdrawn, and with those still arguing the case inside the union.
There is a local dimension we should be plain about. New Zealand cannot enter the Eurovision Song Contest. Eurovision Asia is the first Eurovision-branded contest we could realistically join. In May, TVNZ said it was not considering entry into either contest. Should that change while the EBU's position stands, we would oppose New Zealand's participation, and we would say so in the same terms we are using here.
We know the scale of this. Eurovision NZ is a minor fan community in a country that has never competed, running a website that has not covered the Contest in years and a few social accounts. The EBU will not feel our absence, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. But to cover the contest anyway would be to tell you, our readers, that all of this is worth your enthusiasm. We no longer believe that, and we are not willing to say it.
Last year, we wrote that "unity must be rooted in humanity". That was the condition, and a year on it has not been met. Until it is, the music will play without us.
Eurovision NZ, created in 2015, is a fan community for Eurovision fans in New Zealand. We are not affiliated with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) or the Eurovision Song Contest. We are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, EBU Affiliate Members in New Zealand (Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand).
As a fan community built on values of creativity, solidarity, and respect for human rights, we have made the difficult decision to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest 2026, in response to Israel's continued inclusion in the contest and amid the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The actions of the Israeli government — including the large-scale killing of civilians, mass displacement, the destruction of essential infrastructure, and the ongoing blockade of Gaza — have been widely condemned by international human rights organizations and legal experts as inconsistent with international humanitarian law. These actions directly contradict the core values that the Eurovision Song Contest claims to uphold: peace, unity, cultural exchange, and mutual respect. Allowing official participation from a state engaged in such conduct undermines the contest's credibility as a platform rooted in human dignity and peace.
Beyond this broader context, Israel's recent involvement in the contest itself has increasingly highlighted the tension between politics and the event's supposed non-political stance. Ongoing disputes around lyrics, staging, broadcasting practices, voting transparency, and the handling of protests and audience reactions have repeatedly overshadowed performances and intensified divisions among fans and delegations alike. Rather than fostering unity, these controversies have contributed to a climate of distrust and discomfort, reinforcing concerns that standards are being applied inconsistently and that the contest's stated values are being compromised.
Eurovision has always promoted unity beyond borders, but those values ring hollow when serious violations of international law and human rights go unaddressed. Silence in the face of such realities is not neutrality; it is complicity. We believe that celebrating a spectacle of international togetherness while ignoring the suffering of millions contradicts the very spirit of the contest.
We are inspired by the principled stances taken by broadcasters RTVe (Spain), RTVSLO (Slovenia), RTÉ (Ireland), and AVOTROS (The Netherlands), who have publicly announced that they will not participate in Eurovision 2026. Their actions demonstrate that meaningful institutions can choose to stand for accountability and ethical consistency, even when doing so comes at a cultural or political cost.
Our boycott is not directed at artists or fans, but at the European Broadcasting Union and broadcasters who refuse to uphold their professed values. We stand in solidarity with those calling for justice, dignity, and peace, and we urge the European Broadcasting Union to reassess its approach to inclusion and responsibility.
Unless Israel is excluded or withdraws from the contest, we will not provide coverage, promotion, or support for Eurovision 2026.
We ought to be United by Music. But unity must be rooted in humanity.
Eurovision NZ, created in 2015, is a fan community for Eurovision fans in New Zealand. We are not affiliated with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) or the Eurovision Song Contest. We are not affliated with, or endorsed by, EBU Affliate Members in New Zealand (Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand).